


Training and Development

by NevillesGran



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 4000 words of Elias being condescending, Ambient Mind Control, Gen, Referenced Blood Drinking, Vampires, kind of a 5+1 of assassination attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:48:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21762490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: When an animal falls into a trap, a fox or bear or other such beast, there is often a stage where its fight for escape is more charming than anything. Before the pain and despair set in, it scrabbles at the walls, gnaws on the chains, even cries for help. It is foiled by powers and mechanisms greater than it can conceive, and endearing in its bewilderment.That was the stage Melanie was at, as she attempted to convince Elias that she’d just happened to pick up sandwiches for everyone at the office. For his part, Elias did his best not to smile.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Melanie King
Comments: 12
Kudos: 104
Collections: The_Magnusquerade





	Training and Development

**Author's Note:**

> The fourth scene references and comes directly after ["Workplace Stressors and the Importance of the Chain of Command."](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/The_Magnusquerade/works/20166937)

When an animal falls into a trap, a fox or bear or other such beast, there is often a stage where its fight for escape is more charming than anything. Before the pain and despair set in, it scrabbles at the walls, gnaws on the chains, even cries for help. It is foiled by powers and mechanisms greater than it can conceive, and endearing in its bewilderment.

That was the stage Melanie was at, as she attempted to convince Elias that she’d just happened to pick up sandwiches for everyone at the office. For his part, Elias did his best not to smile.

"Thank you," he finally said, and passed the sandwich back to her. "But I think it's best you throw it out." 

"I– what? No, no– that's wasteful," she stuttered. "You do eat, right? Tim said he's seen it at Christmas parties."

"And you trust his memory of it?" Elias  _ tsk _ ed, and enjoyed the sight of her blanching. It was always interesting, how fear and rage moved blood in the same way.

"But you're correct, I can eat normal food, to a limited extent," he conceded. "I would ask you to eat it yourself—neither of us would mind the garlic." He pressed the sandwich into her unresisting hand. "But the rat poison might give me indigestion, once it's entered your bloodstream. So I'd really rather avoid the whole experience."

"I– I don't know..."

"You really can't lie to me," he said kindly. "Not in any functional manner. And you'll find you cannot bring yourself to actually attack me, no matter how much you might wish it. That would be why this was such a lackluster assassination attempt—or did you simply not bother to do any research, first? Any decent book in the library could have told you that the garlic issue is a peasant myth. And was the poison out-of-the-box thinking, or simple desperation?"

"Can't you just see it in my head?" she spat.

Elias sighed. "I have so much to occupy me, these days, I really don't have the time." 

Nevertheless, he took a moment to brush her mind in a deliberately clumsy, noticeable way. He scarcely needed to—the reek of the sandwich's decidedly non-deli ingredients gave away her scheme. But Melanie shuddered gratifyingly. It was a toss-up between what she hated more: the helplessness, or how part of her welcomed it.

"Consider this your first warning," he said briskly. "I am, after all, leaving you the autonomy to join Jon's personal staff instead; I would rather not have to exact punishment for using that agency, even if your use is very much  _ not _ to the intended purpose."

He shuffled some papers on his desk, more to make a point than because he needed them. "You have much more important matters to attend to than clumsy assassination attempts—we all do. I'd appreciate if you returned to them now."

Melanie retreated, with a glare and absolutely no intention of ceasing her attempts on his unlife. Elias picked up a paper he actually needed, and allowed himself a smile. So long as it didn't actually interfere with Institute business, he almost wondered what she’d try next.

\- - -

Melanie's second assassination attempt could, in another world, actually have succeeded. Elias was distracted. His heir had just  _ vanished _ —or more accurately, Elias's perception of him, stretched easily across the city, had become jumbled in the way particular to the Stranger. 

It could have been worse. It could have been the cool absence of the Forsaken, or the utter invisibility of the Dark's shadows. Jon was Elias's own spawn, and moreover the strongest Archivist he had ever seen, for all that Jon hadn't realized his own potential yet. Orsinov himself—herself, themself, whatever it was these days—couldn't imitate that.

She could simply kill him, however, if she’d changed her mind about using him as sacrifice in her ritual, and almost without thought Elias cast his mind after the last trace of them both. She would  _ probably _ save him to sacrifice. Almost certainly. But it was impossible to tell, across half the city, lost in a cacophony of strangers-

The water that landed on his face stung sharply with faith, and that more than the splash itself brought him back to his office. His perception snapped back like elastic, so for a moment all he saw was Melanie with a water bottle extended, panting with rage and fear and the simple exertion of doing such a thing, when she'd really thought it might work.

He wiped the water slowly from his eyes and didn't restrain himself in the slightest from overwhelming her will to move any further. The true instincts of prey are fight, flight, or freeze: only one was particularly natural to Melanie King, but she held as still as a hare in a headlight. Her breath came nearly as fast.

He took his time to stand, to walk over and cup her warm cheek and savor the scent as her body did its best to oxygenate the blood for rapid movement. Her memories of the last minute and a half were quick and adrenaline-clear. She had gotten the holy water from a church near her flat, which she'd only attended once, for this purpose. She'd carried it in her bag for nearly a week—that, he had noticed, but he had been too busy to bother addressing it. Then she'd happened to walk by while he was (in her eyes) staring into space, presence barely felt, and she'd had her bag because she was going out for lunch, and she'd acted without thinking. Means, motive, opportunity,  _ go _ .

"Well done," he said finally, and ran his nails down her neck as he let her go. "Act fast; that is the best way to avoid detection. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of holy water and other divine symbols—crosses, Stars of David, et cetera—is mostly dependent on the genuine faith of the user. By the quality of this..." He wiped a hand across his face and licked one finger before wiping it on his pants. "I'd say the priest is devout, or at least devout enough for a true blessing, but you haven't made a genuine prayer since..."

He didn't even need to dig; it was so easy to prompt the memory that burst to the surface.

"Ah, asking for your mother to come back, age seven." He gave her a sympathetic smile perfected over centuries, except of course Melanie could feel the lack of anything but irritated malice. "Well, that didn't work at all, did it. So I can see why you gave up the effort."

"Shut  _ up _ ," Melanie snarled, trembling with rage.

This time, Elias's smile was almost entirely genuine. It was tricky, balancing his own control against the shade of a bullet pumping violence through her blood, Slaughter-cursed as the ghost that shot it. But it would be worth the effort eventually.

\- - -

Elias's office door was open, as it usually was when he wasn't on a phone call or having a drink. Basira knocked on the frame towards the end of the day, and stayed warily in the hallway even when he looked up.

"Are you...hungry or something?" she asked. 

Elias thought he might like Basira, as hostages went. She'd be happy to let Daisy kill him if necessary (and if her self-preservation instincts weren't slaved to his.) But she knew when to pick her battles, or at least when to wait until she had all the knowledge she needed to act—or was forced by circumstance to leap from the brink anyway. And she was polite, and appreciated his library. 

So he smiled ruefully, and tried to pull back the radiating sense of his hunger. From her, at least.

"I did skip lunch today," he admitted. "But you don't need to worry about it."

She was clever, his new detective. He watched her mind leap around to conclusions.

"Should someone else be worried about it?" 

Elias smiled more sharply, but kept his tone just as bland. "Also not your concern. In fact, why don't you take tomorrow off. Have lunch with Daisy if you'd like—your meal, not hers. I hear there's a new Korean place on 4th Street."

He wouldn't get much work out of her anyway, until this was done—there was only so much he could do to stifle a thrall's awareness of her master's hunger, and the need to feed it. That was their basic evolutionary purpose. And it wouldn't hurt to remind the Hunter of all the things she couldn't have. 

Basira was holding a book in one hand; her fingers drummed the spine with nervous energy, her thoughts darting around with shreds of plans.

"Fine," she said at last, and walked away.

Elias generally ate once a day, from a carefully maintained rota of employees. He had a private calendar and everything, to account for vacations, illnesses, and the occasional pregnancy. He never took much at once, but he didn't need to; his supply was constant.

So on the first day he skipped his regular meal, he was distinctly peckish by the close of business. Not long after Basira left, Melanie stuck her head in and snapped, "What do you  _ want _ ."

"Nothing in particular, he said, keeping his attention on the half-drafted annual funder report. "You can go for the day."

Even without heightened senses, he might have heard her teeth grinding. She left.

On the second day, he had to stop himself from staring at Rosie's jugular when she brought him the mail. If he'd been human, his stomach would have growled. Basira was at a movie with Daisy, warm and cold hands intertwined to stop the mutual nervous twitching. Elias only glanced, sparing her his attention along with the full sense of her purpose. 

He saved both for the thrall who had never picked a battle in her life, at least not with judgement. Twice in the morning, Melanie stood up to walk to his office, then sat down again with a huff. It happened three more times after lunch, until with a snarl she threw her things in her bag and left entirely, ran home to her flat and her bed where she could take a few sleeping pills and pull a pillow over her head.

She slept well, and dreamed deeply. Elias has no need to interfere—her subconscious, at least, knew what she wanted. Knew what she was  _ for _ . Her dreams were full of the sweet scent of blood and the bliss of giving it.

But Melanie’s conscious will was one of the most obstinate Elias had encountered, and that without the Slaughter curse to direct it. She nearly outlasted him, refusal against hunger. 

He could have actively summoned her, with only a little more effort than to simply be sure that she really  _ felt _ how strongly he needed blood. Or he could have sated his appetite with anyone else at the institute, and spared himself the trouble.

But it was so, so sweet when Melanie finally broke, stalked into his office just before the close of day and snapped, “Fine, feed on me!”, and Elias could purr in perfect honestly, “Why, you’re volunteering, without any demands on my part?”

“That’s not– just shut up and bite me. I know you need it.” 

Her tone wavered dangerously between challenge and pleading. She rounded his desk to stand before him with hands clenched in shaking fists, expression twisted unwillingly into concern for his wellbeing. She tossed her short hair back from her face and bared her neck, wafting forward the scent of sweat and blood.

It was utterly intoxicating. Elias hadn’t eaten in three days and every heartbeat he didn’t have demanded that he claim her, consume her. 

But he wasn’t a fledging to be ruled by his basest instincts. His fangs slid out but he sat back, and said mildly, “Have you learned a lesson, perhaps, about how rude it is to spill salt all over someone’s office?”

“I’m sorry.” Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks. “Elias, please.”

He patted his knee as for a dog—and really, what was the difference? Shorter lifespan, unconditional love if managed even vaguely correctly, and, ultimately, trainable. Melanie sat without further complaint. Elias slaked his thirst.

She did start bringing a stake to work every day, after that.

\- - -

“Jon.”

Jon gave the faintest murmur of awareness, a wash of loyal attention rather than any actual sound. He nuzzled a little closer into Elias’s lap, against the hand running gently through his hair.

Elias smiled down at him and gave him another pet. Really, Jon needed to feed and to keep resting, to recover from the ordeals of his captivity by the Stranger cult—and from the scars Elias had just inflicted on his psyche himself. A harsh, regrettable lesson, but necessary. 

Alas...

“Jon, Melanie is coming, to try and kill me again. You really must get up.”

Jon’s murmur was audible this time, lisped slightly around the fangs he still barely knew what to do with. But plain as moonlight he was responding to the tone rather than the words. His mind was still a haze of comfort relieved from trauma.

So Elias shared his own awareness of the situation—Melanie’s view as she approached the office, stake in hand. The pounding, curse-heightened fury of her thoughts; the determination to just do  _ something _ .

She opened the door and Jon went from somnolent to snarling in an instant. He slammed her against the doorframe hard enough to bruise, hard enough to shake the painting on the wall adjacent. The stake fell from her hand as his grip nearly broke her wrist. His other hand, around her throat, muffled her cry; he shoved her head back, her body arching forward in counterpoint, to bare the artery for his fangs—

—and stopped. His grip loosened, he edged back, the red light in his eyes dimmed as some semblance of Jonathan Sims pushed up past the raw, savage instinct. 

“Melanie?”

Her eyes darted to Elias, a thrall’s reflex to seek their master, before she remembered her own self. 

“Get the  _ fuck _ off me!”

“I—“ Jon dropped her wrist, but only loosened his hand on her neck, her back still pressed against the door jamb. His gaze, too, went to Elias, his mind twisting with guilt every which way. “I can’t let you hurt him.”

Elias propped his chin on one hand to watch, but stayed seated and silent, giving them time to work it out.

"Would you snap out of it?" Melanie snarled at Jon. "He's not all-powerful. If you actually wanted to get out of here—if you actually wanted anyone to get out of here, then you'd help me kill him."

Jon was already shaking his head. "I do want to help, Melanie. I want to help all of you. Just...not like this."

"Sure," she snapped. "That's why you've been gone for three weeks. Tim and Martin are getting seriously sick, did you know that?"

"No– what?" Jon dropped her entirely, twitching toward the door, casting his mind out toward his thralls—and finding them, no doubt, quite ill with withdrawal, for all that they were loyally at their desks below. If Jon had been missing another couple days, Elias would have been forced to step in and take them back himself, or watch them die. (Or risk them actually pulling through and gaining the strength to leave, but that wasn’t an acceptable option.) He hadn't quite decided which. Jon would certainly have been disappointed with their deaths.

Jon took a step toward the hall, toward the stairs down to the Archives—and then came back, to place himself between Melanie and Elias. It seemed the lesson had been well-taken, then. 

"I know you're angry," Jon said quietly. "I am too, okay? Obviously. But I– we, need him. We– we will—" He took a deep breath out of habit, doing his best not to think of Elias, not to reach for him as desperately as he had been doing not ten minutes ago. "We  _ will _ ...deal with him, we'll stop whatever evil plans he has, or whatever. But not like this." 

"...Alright," said Melanie, after a long moment of glaring silence. "We'll do it your way."

She bent down and picked up her stake—gingerly; there would be dark bruises on that wrist. She tucked it into her belt loop, and glared at them both in equal measure. 

"But whatever your way actually is, you'd better figure it out fast, or get out of  _ my _ way.”

Jon nodded stiffly. Melanie stormed out. Jon stayed in place, watching her go, following clumsily after her moving mind until Elias got up and laid a hand on his shoulder. At that, he relaxed (a well-taken lesson indeed.)

"Thank you, Jon." Elias let gratitude and pride flow down the bond between them.

"I—"  _ Didn't do it for you, _ Jon couldn't bring himself to say as he was washed by that warmth.

"I still have questions, Elias," he managed. "And I  _ need _ answers." 

He pulled away, tension returning with every step. "I'm going to see to Martin and Tim."

"Of course you are," Elias said indulgently. 'I'll be here to talk when you're done."

\- - -

The Unknowing wasn't the first massive, terrible blood ritual someone had devised, combining the arts of human mages with the power of vampires. Nor, likely, would it be the last. Most were grandiose and cataclysmic—the dissolution of all knowledge, the destruction of the sun, the universal spread of rot.

The one Elias had discovered two centuries ago, when he went by a different name, was more subtle. Passive, after its completion—and it was so, so close to completion, now. It had been half-complete when he stumbled across it: there was the Archive, intangible and vast, repository of all thought and memory, vampiric and human and other, building in real time.  _ All _ of it, across the entire world and span of human history. The only thing missing was an Archivist to bind it all together, to sit at the center and  _ know _ it all _. _ Powerful enough to hold it together, with just the right sort of mind to not be broken by the flood.

Elias wasn't the Archivist. He could dip his toe into the Archive and peruse, at risk of a splitting headache, but he knew better than to try for more. (But if an Archivist could control the Archive, and Elias could control the  _ Archivist _ ...soon. Jon was perfect, and he was getting stronger every day.)

Elias had entirely sufficient faculty, however, to find what he needed in this case. It wasn't exactly hidden—Amherst liked to linger, on the whole.

\- - -

Melanie bided her time for another chance to attack, but Elias moved on to another test. The reminder of how much she needed to serve him had been satisfying, and he doubted she'd be as impressed by a test of how long  _ she _ could go without  _ his _ blood—but it was mildly entertaining to watch. And it saved him the effort of remembering to feed her. The Slaughter curse actually worked in his favor, this time, driving her to bleed others any way she could.

She stumbled into his office after 24 days, hating how much she wanted the blood and hating even more how weak she was without it. And above all that, desperate for the rush, shivering with the sheer  _ need _ of it.

And below it, holding a stake up one sleeve, and ready to not-quite-fake a stumble and drag the window shades open at the first chance she got. Elias truly didn't notice until it was too late.

But his shades, foolishly provocative though they seemed, were both remote-controlled and literally cemented in place, and Melanie was as weak as a lamb with a three-day fever. He didn't even have to move faster than a human, to catch her arm mid-swing and pry the stake from her trembling fingers.

"I’m growing tired of this game," he said as he settled her into a chair, "I just wish I could explain it to you, in a way you'd understand, that this isn't the way to go about things."

"So I'll believe all our brains would dribble out our ears, if you weren't there to prop them up?” She spoke with the usual snarl, but she watched him like a man in an empty desert watches a single raincloud.

"No—if that was the only issue, I would simply put the knowledge in your head." He leaned against the desk and played with the stake in one hand. "Nor can I simply induce better behavior, not long-term—the gift of my bloodline is Sight and memory, not the manipulation of a person's core. You'd need the Web for that, and I have no intention of contracting out."

He brushed against her psyche, the equivalent of a hand on her cheek, and she shuddered mind and body with irritated longing. Elias pursed his lips.

"And your problems are certainly core-deep. It's not the blood you have issue with, some righteous moral qualm. Nor the state of being known inside and out. It's the entrapment." His voice turned to silk. "This, now, is exactly what you cannot stand. Knowing that no matter what, in the end, you'll return to me on your knees."

"Shut  _ up _ ," she snapped, and locked her legs, for all that she was already sitting.

Elias left the stake on the desk and let her stare at it, smoldering, as he prowled around her.

"You're beginning to think that death would be preferable. But then the thought intrudes: why only  _ your _ death? Why not try to take me out as well, long though you know the odds are. And bad luck to anyone else destroyed in the process."

She shook her head wordlessly.

"I am, however, perfectly capable of threats."

He stood in front of her again and held her eyes, a connection required for this sort of work. Particularly when there was barely a trace of his blood in her. His gaze, he knew, would be red and dark with power.

She glared back, eyes bright with hunger and cursed rage. "Threaten away. I've got nothing."

"That's not quite true." He smiled, thin-lipped and condescending. "Your father was the last person you really cared about, wasn't he."

Melanie took the news beautifully. For a moment, the horror overwhelmed the hunger—and why wouldn’t it. Elias could barely stand the Corruption bloodline himself, the rot that infested everything they touched, the flies and rats and other vermin they invited to feed with them. And to be forced to live through that, only to burn to death...

“Take it back,” Melanie begged through her tears. “Make me forget–  _ please _ —” 

“It will fade in time,” Elias said, none too kindly. “Unless another of your little assassination attempts forces us to have another conversation like this, in which case I assure you, Melanie, I will give you more than just the knowledge of what happened. I will make you  _ relive _ it, every moment.”

She whimpered and shook her head minutely, unable to tear her eyes away from his. 

“Every time you close your eyes, you will see your father’s agonized body. Every time you take a breath, you will smell the smoke and the rot.” He gave her a hint of it, just to drive the point home—and released her gaze. 

She was beyond defiance, or even the effort of baring her neck in submission. She dropped her head into her trembling hands and wept.

“That’s alright, take your time.” Elias returned to the mode of a conscientious employer, helped her to her feet and ushered her gently toward the door. “Tell you what, why don't you take the rest of the day off? I'm sure you have a lot to process.”

She left without another word—though she did manage, in a corner of her mind consumed by neither grief, fear, nor desperate hunger, to whisper a quiet,  _ fuck you. _ Elias wouldn’t have noticed were he not watching with closely.

She’d do well for Jon. Her inability to give up the fight would satiate his moral squeamishness, and she’d be a useful protector with that stake. So long as all objections remained superficial—Elias wasn’t going to lose his perfect Archivist to some petty moral qualms.

He did hope the memories pushed Melanie over the edge to offering herself to Jon instead. The game had been fun, but there were only so many ways to taunt someone before it got dull—and with enough trial and error at killing vampires, she might actually become dangerous to her masters. There was only so much use for a thrall that bit without permission the hand that fed it.


End file.
